Robbie Collin30 July 2015 • 8:38am

In the hands of, say, Robin Williams, this Mr Benn-like body swap fantasy could have been magical. Instead, we get Adam Sandler

Before you criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes, the old saying goes. Well, you’d probably have to trek the length of the Trans-Siberian Railway to offset the ocean-loads of flak you may feel like levelling at Adam Sandler after seeing this catastrophic new magic-realist comedy drama.

What makes The Cobbler particularly wounding is that for once, the premise needn’t have necessarily resulted in such a washout. Sandler plays Max Simkin, a surly shoe repairer who can transform into anyone whose footwear he pulls on, thanks to a magical stitching machine in the basement of his shop: a funky and thought-provoking idea, with something of the gently psychedelic texture of the old children’s television show Mr Benn.

It’s not too hard to imagine a version of the film in which Sandler’s lonely misanthrope roams the city, learning how to touch other people’s hearts via their soles: a dour, New York-based Amélie, drifting therapeutically through strangers’ lives.

There’s no little potential for soul-searching, too, as early in the film, Max finds a pair of shoes that belonged to his absent father. Imagine the pathos if he’d tried them on, keen to look his hopeless old man straight in the eye after all these years, only to turn to the mirror and see his own face still staring back at him. But no: after slipping on the slip-ons, Sandler turns into Dustin Hoffman, and Max pops home and treats his elderly, senile mother (Lynn Cohen) to a romantic meal and a kiss (no tongues).

The Cobbler is full of moments like this, in which the film seems to stumble on a scenario that could be used to mine its central gimmick for humour or poignancy, before shuffling off, muttering darkly, in the opposite direction. One of the first things Max does when he discovers his powers, for example, is turn himself into a popular local DJ (Dan Stevens), and attempt to have sex with his model girlfriend (Kim Cloutier) in the shower.

This particular wheeze comes to naught, though not because Max has a sudden crisis of conscience: instead, he stops only when he realises he’ll have to take off the magic shoes in order to get in the shower with her. Later, the film suggests that Stevens’ character is secretly gay and his girlfriend is sexually unfulfilled, as if that makes the whole thwarted rape business morally excusable.

After a bit, Max decides to use his powers for good, which involves derailing the plans of a grasping property developer (Ellen Barkin) and making life miserable for Ludlow (Cliff ‘Method Man’ Smith), a local gangster. Ludlow is one of three black characters Max transforms himself into over the course of the film for the sole purposes of committing crime and menacing people. If this is satire, the punchline’s buried halfway to Australia.

The writer and director is Thomas McCarthy, whose earlier, very decent independent dramas The Station Agent and The Visitor, for which Richard Jenkins was nominated for an Oscar, offer no hints of the horrors that have manifested here. Perhaps the uneasy combination of Sandler with a respectable filmmaker was a factor in The Cobbler’s poor box-office performance in the US: with a meagre opening weekend of $24,000, it counts as the biggest flop in both director and star’s careers by some distance.

Certainly, the film feels itchily uncomfortable in its own skin: while it carries itself like a thoughtful, award-worthy movie (the palette is all grey skies and sun-dappled concrete), underneath, it’s as crass, puerile and passionless as Sandler’s usual big-money work.

You might reasonably imagine that Sandler might have been attracted to the role by the transformations themselves. This kind of rapid-fire personality switching could be fertile ground for an ambitious comic actor: just think of what an on-form Robin Williams might have done with it. But when Max turns into someone else, Sandler disappears from the film completely, often for scenes at a time, while the lead role temporarily goes to whatever second- or third-tier cast member happened to be playing the character Max changes into. Arguably, the actor-switching adds realism: a key concern, of course, in a film about magic shoes. Performance-wise, it smacks of laziness, if not outright cowardice.

Sandler desperately needs another Punch-Drunk Love, or at least a Funny People, to remind us, and perhaps also himself, why he keeps doing this. From its squandered premise to its mind-bogglingly ill-judged smirk of an ending, this is as persuasive an argument yet for why he shouldn’t.